DataViz Makeover 1

In this article, Singapore’s Labor Force Participation Rate data will be used while applying the fundamentals of Visual Analytics using Tableau. This includes critiques about the origianal visualisation and propose an alternative to address the flaws.

Min Xiaoqi https://www.linkedin.com/in/xiaoqi-min/ (Master of IT in Business, Singapore Management University)https://scis.smu.edu.sg/master-it-business/financial-technology-and-analytics-track
2022-02-12

1. Original visualization

The data visualisation above is created by using data provided by Ministrty of Manpower, Singapore (MOM). The data are available under the page entitle Statistical Table: Labor Force. For the purpose of this Dataviz Makeover, we will use the data on Resident Labour Force Participation Rate by Age and Sex.

2. Critique of original visualization

2.1 Clarity

2.2 Aesthetics

3. Proposed design

3.1 Design sketch

3.2 Advantages of proposed design

4. Data visualization steps

4.1 Data preparation

Before we head to plotting the graph, we need to clean the original data set to fit our visualization purposes. Data preparation will be done in Tableau Prep Builder. The detailed steps as below:

No. Step Description
1 The raw data consists of 2 sheets, the second worksheet will be used with more specified age groups.
2 Create a new excel workbook, copy the 3 segments (Total, Males, Females) from “mrsd_Res_LFPR_2” into the new workbook as 3 separate worksheets, with years only from 2010 to 2021.
3 Open Tableau Prep Builder, click on the “+” besides “Connections” to import the excel workbook created in Step 2. The worksheets will be shown under “Tables”.
4 Drag “total” worksheet into the flow pane, click on the “+” button and add a “Clean Step”.
5 Under column “F1”, select “70 & Over” and “Age(Years)/Sex” and right click on “Exclude” to delete these rows as they are unnecessary data rows. Then change the “F1” column name to “age group”.
6 For the rest of the column name, change them in order of year, i.e. 2010 to 2021.
7 At the flow pane, create a new step “Pivot”.
8 Under the “Field”, select all the years and drag into the “Pivoted Field”
9 Under “Pivot Results”, change “Pivot Name 1” to “year”, and “Pivot Value 1” to “percentage”
10 “Create Calculated Field” to add a new column “sex”, the values under this column will be “total”.
11 Drag the column fields to rearrange them, final worksheet will be like this.
12 Drag “male” worksheet into the flow pane, add a new step
13 Under column “F1”, select “70 & over” and “Exclude”. Change the column name to “age group” and row name “Males” to “Males total”.
14 Repeat step 6-11, to create the final worksheet for “Males”.
15 Repeat step 12-14 to create the final worksheet for “Females”
16 Click on the “+” button and select “Union”, drag the other two worksheets to “Add” to merge the 3 worksheets into one output.
17 “Remove” the column for “Table Names”
18 Click on “+” and select “Output”.Choose the file destination to be saved and “Run Flow” to save the file.

4.2 Data visualization

4.2.1 Plotting chart 1

No. Step Description
1 Open Tableau Desktop and drag the cleaned data file into the working pane
2 Drag “Year” into columns and “Percentage” into rows
3 Drag “Sex” into the filter pane, and check “female” and “male” to show the labor participation rate related to female and male population
4 Drag “Age Group” into the filter pane, and check “Females total” and “Males total” to show the yearly total labor participation rate related to female and male population
5 Drag “Sex” into the color box to separate the chart by male and female values
6 On the “Sex” legend, right click and choose “Edit Colors”, choose pink for female and blue for male.
7 Change the chart type to “Line”, click on “Label” and check “Show mark labels”
8 Navigate to Analysis > Table Layout > Advanced. In the Table Options dialog, in the Default number format section, select Manual. For Decimal places, type in 1.
9 Choose the range of axis to be “Fixed” from 50 onwards, and change the axis title to “LFPR (%)”
10 Drag “Percentage” into the rows to create a secondary plot, choose “Quick Table Calculation” and “Difference” to calculate the difference between the male and female labor participation rate in a specific year.
11 Under “Edit Table Calculation”, choose compute using specific dimensions and check only “Sex”, this will only calculate the difference between male and female on a yearly basis
12 Change the title for secondary plot
13 Change the title of the chart, differentiate title and subtitles by font size and bolding.

4.2.2 Plotting chart 2

No. Step Description
1 Drag “Age Group” and “Year” into columns, “Percentage” into rows
2 Drag “Age Group” into filters and uncheck the rows related to total percentages
3 Drag “Sex” into filters and only check female and male as we want to separate the chart by gender
4 Drag “Sex” into the color box to have differentiated colors by gender
5 Change the chart type to “Line”
6 Change the y-axis title
7 Change chart title

4.2.3 Creating dashboard

No. Step Description
1 Pull the two worksheets into the dashboard pane, and change the title of the dashboard
2 Click on “layout” and change the color of the background of the title
3 Drag sex filter to the bottom of the dashboard
4 For the filter, click on “Arrange items”, “Single row”
5 Under “Objects”, drag “Text” box into the dashboard to create captions
6 Include the data source and data link

5. Conclusion and insights

5.1 Final data visualization

The final data visualization is shown below, it is also available at Tableau Public

5.2 Insights

This is also reflected in the yearly LFPR by gender and age groups chart. We can see that the female LFPR saw steep increase over the past 12 years for majority of age groups, especially in the middle-age groups. This also reflects Singapore being a more inclusive society and caring for women rights. Singapore government has also put in support for women to pursue their careers by providing caregiving supports and flexible working arrangements, stated by Channel News Asia.